Why give up?

Postal Service, the band that stood up to the USPS, delivers music that justifies its fame. Plus: Free downloads from indie idol Neko Case, hipster favorite Vashti Bunyan and more.

By Thomas Bartlett

Nov 10, 2004 | Last week I went to see Deerhoof, with Need New Body opening. The show was so great that I was compelled to revisit both bands' recordings, and the music I found there, coupled with memories of the show, has kept me energized all week. Need New Body plays jagged, nearly epileptic dance music, with minimalist interlocking double-keyboard parts and spastic, hyperactive drums, fronted by a chanting, groaning, bearded man plucking at a banjo. It rocks. Try "Show Me Your Heart" (available for free download here), from 2003's "UFO."

Deerhoof's recent "Milk Man" didn't quite grab me on its release. It seemed a little staid, a little reserved, a little too calculated in its combination of dissonant guitar stabs, catchy chorus melodies and surprise tempo shifts. But in concert, the songs come alive. There's an extraordinarily compelling balance between the cerebral intensity and exactitude of guitarists Chris Cohen and John Dieterich, who seem to think and move as one, and the exploding energy and improvisatory looseness of drummer Greg Saunier. Happily, the band has made a 10-track live record, "Bibidi Babidi Boo," available for free download here. Both recording quality and performance quality are varied, but the whole thing is worth hearing.

"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" and "Such Great Heights," Postal Service, from "Give Up"
Last Saturday's New York Times had an amusing article about the Postal Service, a duo of Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello, and their unexpected brush with copyright law in the form of a cease-and-desist letter from the U.S. Postal Service. The story has a happy, and absurd, resolution: The band keeps its name in return for helping to promote the use of the actual Postal Service, and agreeing to perform at the postmaster general's annual National Executive Conference. If you read the article and were curious about the band's music but didn't feel like doing the Googlework to see if any of it was available online -- well, that's I'm here for. As it happens, two of the band's best songs are available for free, and they make it easy to understand why their record, "Give Up," was, by indie standards, such a runaway success: The music is easy-listening indie synth pop, breezily sophisticated, catchy and uncomplicatedly beautiful. Free Downloads: "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" and "Such Great Heights"

"Diamond Day," Vashti Bunyan, from "Just Another Diamond Day"
Over the last few years Vashti Bunyan, a not particularly successful British folkie from the '60s, largely forgotten except among obsessive collectors of obscure LPs, has emerged as a dominant influence on a number of today's most critically and hipsterly approved acts, including Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart and the Animal Collective (the latter two of whom she's even collaborated with). Just how the unexpected resurgence took place is not entirely clear, but it really gathered force with the DiCristina label's 2000 reissue of Bunyan's lone full-length, "Just Another Diamond Day." The music itself is lovely and almost impossibly precious, with Bunyan la-la-la-ing and cooing airily about how lovely nature is, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a gaggle of recorders. Bunyan strikes me as the Satie to Nick Drake's Chopin, less complicated, less depressive, less substantial. But she's to be treasured, for she brought a significant amount of beauty into the world, both in her own music and in the influence it has exerted. Free Download: "Diamond Day"

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